Book Review: Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy #3)

Release Date: May 3, 2016
Author: Danielle L. Jensen
Publisher: Angry Robot
Length: 384 pages
Source: eGalley via NetGalley

The thrilling conclusion to the breakout Malediction Trilogy by Goodreads Choice finalist Danielle L. Jensen.

Cécile and Tristan have accomplished the impossible, but their greatest challenge remains: defeating the evil they have unleashed upon the world.

As they scramble for a way to protect the people of the Isle and liberate the trolls from their tyrant king, Cécile and Tristan must battle those who’d see them dead. To win, they will risk everything. And everyone.

But it might not be enough. Both Cécile and Tristan have debts, and they will be forced to pay them at a cost far greater than they had ever imagined.

    

Review:

Protagonists: As with many final books in series, our heroes have come a long way and grown a lot since the beginning of the first installment. Céline is now a fairly powerful witch who's not afraid to enter into the line of fire to save her race and those she loves. Tristan is no longer the pompous and self-loathing troll he once was and is now a thoughtful and wise leader who will also do what he must to protect humans and those who stand with him. Throughout this book there's still quite a bit of growth left for them to go through as they fight off threats from multiple fronts and try to hold on to hope even when all may seem futile. I have to say that while I liked these characters in the first book, as the series went on I really grew to love them, they're flawed and damaged in places but they learn to over come or subvert those flaws in the pursue of the greater good.

Romance: Since this is the last book in the trilogy there isn't all that much romance, or I should say that with no apparent threats keeping them apart there isn't all that much to the romance. While there is a bot of romantic drama here and there, there isn't all that much to tell. In this book Céline and Tristan have to make some tough choices and hard sacrifices, not only as it pertains to the people they are trying to protect, but as it pertains to their marriage. That being said though, even though the romance is a much smaller sub-plot than it has been in this series, it's still very interesting to me and I'm still heavily invested in it. Plus, since there's less of a focus on romance there's more of a focus on the kick-ass plot and world-building.

World-Building: This book picks up pretty much right after the previous one. The barrier keeping trolls in has been broken, The Winter Queen has sent her message, and now Tristan, Céline, and their friends need to go to war to help protect the humans on the Isle of Light from the trolls that would see harm and enslavement come to them. Pretty much the entirely of this book is about the war that began at the end of Hidden Huntress. Though it's not really a focal point, we do learn more about Arcadia and the Fae that live there. Tristan and Cécile both have debts to the Winter and Summer rulers respectively, and since this is the final book in this series you bet that the complications surrounding those debts come up in a big way and cause unforeseen consequences.

Predictability: So if I had to pick a book in this series that's the least predictable it'd probably be this one. On the whole the bigger vague questions as to where this series will end I, for the most part guessed, but as always it's those smaller and more specific details that are the real surprises in books. For instance, it's been proven that this author isn't afraid to kill of characters, even those that may seem important to the story, so logically I assumed that at least one character would die, but it's who that death belongs to, and mild spoiler alert: more than one person dies, that's the real surprise. The foreshadowing for this book, nay this series, is fantastic. There's never too much to clue you in to those larger plot twists, but at the same time, once they happen it's not to hard to see the little seeds that lead up to that particular twist.

Ending: So as this book and series was drawing to a close, part of me felt like, somewhere in the back of my mind, that this series might not truly be the end. That maybe this author has a spin-off series in mind. As everything lead up to that final climax I still thought that maybe there was possibly another story left to tell in this world. The grand finale of this book was spectacular. Thing definitely didn't quite go the way I was expecting them to, and in the end I felt as though that last final climax was the perfect way to end the conflict for this series, and then came the most emotional, for lack of a more descriptive term, epilogue I've ever read. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that my thoughts that there may be more left to discover in this world, is most likely wrong (I'll give it 98% because I'm sure if the author wanted to she could probably come up with another story in this world, even if it didn't feature any of these characters.) The ending of this book and series very much ties up all loose ends. And so this epic tale comes to a close.

Rating:

While I cannot speak for anyone else's opinions, mine is that this was the perfect ending to this series. For me there are no more lingering questions and I'm excited to see what comes next from this phenomenal author!

Book Review: Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy #1)

Release Date: April 1, 2014
Author: Danielle L. Jensen
Publisher: Strange Chemistry/Angry Robot
Length: 469 pages
Source: eGalley via NetGalley

For five centuries, a witch’s curse has bound the trolls to their city beneath the mountain. When Cécile de Troyes is kidnapped and taken beneath the mountain, she realises that the trolls are relying on her to break the curse.

Cécile has only one thing on her mind: escape. But the trolls are clever, fast, and inhumanly strong. She will have to bide her time…

But the more time she spends with the trolls, the more she understands their plight. There is a rebellion brewing. And she just might be the one the trolls were looking for...

    

Review:

Protagonist: Cécile grew up the daughter of a farmer, but was trained and tutored in the art of singing, knowing that one day she'd go off to live with her mother and make a career out of her talent. On the very day she is to be sent off she is taken captive and sold to the trolls beneath the mountain. Very few know about the trolls and no one who's seen them have ever spoken of them. Now Cécile knows just how real they are. Cécile starts off scared but stubborn as she's thrown into a life she never wanted, however over the course of the book she grows and changes, realizing that not all trolls are the monsters that legends have led her to believe. Many simply want to be free and to live a life they see fit. I really liked Cécile, she doesn't start off as a bad-ass heroine kicking ass and taking names, but it easy to see as she develops that she has that potential, but even if she didn't she's still a very strong and admirable female protagonist.

Romance: So due to some unintentional vibes the romance is very hard to discern at first. There are two possible candidates, however there's never a love triangle, it's just that at first it's not clear who the love interest is. Even then there it was quite a while before I felt comfortable that the author wasn't going to turn the compelling one on one romance into a love triangle. That being said for the most part I loved the romance between Cécile and Tristan. The chase and will they/won't they aspect of the relationship was the best. It was fairly slow moving and reminded me in many ways of Beauty and the Beast, however once the romance really got started, Tristan's self-loathing troll side comes out and it's not pretty. Things do get smoothed over, for better or worse, but it just got too Twilighty there for a minute.

World-Building: So going into this all I knew was that it was a fantasy about trapped trolls stealing away a girl with the talent to sing. However it is far more complex than that. This book contains a lot of political intrigue and there's a rebellion brewing that Cécile finds herself at the center of. Over the course of this book we learn a lot about the trolls, troll culture, and about the original spell that trapped them in the mountain in the first place. There's still a lot left unexplored and many things were set up to hopefully explore in further novels. I have to say I didn't expect much in the way of world-building when it came to this book, but as this story progresses this world grows immensely and I'm very eager to see how it grows in future installments.

Predictability: There was a lot to this book that I wasn't expecting, going into it I wasn't quite sure what would happen and like I mentioned above, when it came to the romance I feel like there was some unintentional foreshadowing going on. In fact there were some more similar misdirects, and some things that I thought we would discover left undiscovered. There were of course small moments that I could see coming but they were few and far between. On the whole though I liked seeing where this story would go and I enjoyed the feeling of not knowing what to expect and feeling as though anything can happen.

Ending: So as I was getting closer to the end and things were getting more and more intense I was waiting for what I call the final climax, usually a battle or struggle of some sort, and there was one, in fact depending on how you look at it there was more than one. Usually the final climax isn't very long, but it's not exactly short either, but this story felt like it had a few smaller climaxes at the end, while still keeping the tension high between each. The last of these was very intense and is sure to breed many consequences. The cool down was handled very well. While it wasn't something I expected, where things ended up by the end didn't necessarily surprise me. The very end has a bit of a cliffhanger, and while it's not too bad of one, I'm kind of happy I waited to read this one as the wait might have killed me.

Rating:

So the rating for this book was a bit of a no brainer for me. I love this book and this world the author has created. My only complaint is the self-loathing love interest, which created quite a bit of annoying drama, but even then it wasn't anywhere close to a deal breaker, especially when compared to the rest of the book!

Book Review: Once Upon a Changeling

Release Date: January 14, 2013
Author: V. J. Chambers
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Length: 180 pages
Source: Review Copy via NetGalley

Things started going wrong for Russ Knight last year.

He found out his girlfriend was cheating on him when she gave birth at the junior prom and left the baby to die in a trashcan. Russ didn't even know she was pregnant. Hell, he thought they were saving themselves for each other.

Now, locked in her padded cell, his girlfriend is screaming that she was just trying to get the faeries to give her baby back. Russ doesn't buy it. But to shut her up, Russ tries a trick the old legends say will work, and the baby starts swearing and begging to be taken back to Faerie. He's got to accept the truth: the kid he's raising is a faerie changeling.

The faeries are going to sacrifice the real baby at the Equinox if Russ can't get them to switch again. But the only person who can get the baby back is a biological parent, and Russ' girlfriend certainly can’t help. To save an innocent life, Russ will face ancient faeries with razor-like teeth, wrestle snarling skeleton dogs, and, maybe worst of all, track down every guy his girlfriend was sleeping with last year in the hopes of finding the baby's real father.

And apparently, the father could be half his senior class.

    

Review:

Protagonist: Russ Knight has had quite a difficult few months after finding out his girlfriend was pregnant, by someone else, at prom, after she tried to leave it to die in a garbage can. Since then he's been taking care of this kid who's not his, working, going to school where people blame him for Cindi snapping and trying to kill her baby, and really all he wants is to just make it to graduation. Then he finds out that this baby is a changeling, a faerie that was switched Cindi's real baby. Honestly, Russ was an okay narrator, but I felt like his characterization was really uneven, and there wasn't all that much development for him, a few "life lessons" here and there but since it was hard to get a good read on his character it was hard to see how or if he grew and changed as the story was told.

Romance: So I went into this book not expecting a romance whatsoever, but unfortunately there was one. Why I say it's unfortunate was both that this book really didn't need one, and the one it has is just awful. Apparently Puck isn't the kind of girl Russ would normally be into but apparently she's just so freaking beautiful that it doesn't matter. The thing is, Russ comments on her good looks when they first meet, like right after the book starts, but for most of the book things seem pretty platonic between them then out of nowhere Russ loves her and wants to be with her blah blah blah. Seriously this was one of the most forced romances I've ever read.

World-Building: So this is a fey lore novel, and it the fey part of it is done rather poorly, we barely get to see any of it and it's not explained very well. I don't know if it was the intent of the world-building or the uneven writing that did it but I just felt like there wasn't enough explanation, things felt too convenient, and it just kind of falls apart. The writing is super weird, and I felt like there were things that should have been fleshed out more and there should have been a whole lot less rambling on the part of the narrator, both in his exposition and at times when he actually spoke.

Predictability: This book was very easily predictable. I mean I didn't know everything right off the bat, but when there was foreshadowing it was pretty heavy handed leading me to realize some pretty important twists. That alone wouldn't have been much of a problem if I didn't feel like the author just kept trying to tease things I already knew and beating these twists into my head. There were plenty of times where these twists could have been revealed, times when it would make sense and I wasn't going insane waiting for it to happen, but more often than not they were dragged out and all I got was more over the top foreshadowing.

Ending: The ending to this book was pretty okay. There was a big final climax that I liked and there were some far less aggravating twists in the end. The final chapter just sort of wraps everything up, and answers most questions you'd probably have. My only problem with the ending was that everything just seemed to go a little too smoothly, everything was just a bit too convenient.

Rating:

So yeah, this wasn't my favorite book. It's wasn't terrible and if the I cared more about the romance or there wasn't any romance, the foreshadowing wasn't so heavy handed, Russ wasn't such an uneven character, and the world building was cleaned up, I think this could have been a really entertaining read.